Guardians Season in Review: The Shaman

Guardians Season in Review: The Shaman

– byMario Crescibene

This is the final Season in Review for the recurring characters of the Crescibene universe, and fittingly, our final character’s arc proved to be the most memorable: The Shaman.

The Shaman’s role was simple: to act as a grounding force during the season. Sports fans are, by nature, a volatile group. The emotional pendulum swings hard in both directions. High highs are treated as confirmation of destiny; low lows are framed as evidence of collapse and despair. In those moments, everything feels absolute. Perspective disappears, patience evaporates, and entire seasons outlooks are reduced to whatever happened most recently.

The Shaman was created to stabilize the emotional extremes that tend to define sports fandom—slowing the emotional spirals, reminding readers that perspective is the key, and that the future is unknowable until it arrives. So in those bleak moments during the seasons when it became easiest to lose perspective, The Shaman was there to restore it.

What makes his arc so memorable, however, is how perfectly his lessons aligned with what the Guardians were living out on the field. At each turning point, The Shaman offered reader’s perspective, and the team’s historic run became living proof of persistence, belief, and presence in action.

In the sections that follow, we’ll revisit the season at the moments each article was written, examine the lessons The Shaman shared, and see how a season many called doomed instead became one for the record books.

The Shaman Speaks (June 29, 40-42)

The first Shaman article, The Shaman Speaks, was published on June 29, at a moment when the season felt as though it was slipping away. The Guardians had just been swept by the Cardinals, had lost four straight games, and sat at 40–42. They were playing a brand of baseball that felt tight, joyless, and mentally strained. The early-season looseness was gone, and the joy with it. Mistakes were compounding, confidence appeared shaken, and for many fans, this felt like the beginning of the end.

In the article, my character wasn’t simply concerned with the losses themselves, but how the team was responding to them—pressing, forcing outcomes, and playing with visible tension rather than flow. But The Shaman reframed the slump not as failure, but as a necessary stage of evolution: a valley that precedes the ascent. His message centered on patience and faith in the process. On rebuilding foundations and returning to the basics, rather than forcing outcomes or chasing results.

Most importantly, The Shaman rejected the tendency to stare at the standings, or to fixate on the summit when we were still in the valley. The ascent can only be completed by placing all awareness on the present step and nothing else. And then one step at a time, the journey unfolds.

At the end of June, with the Guardians reeling and perspective hard to maintain, The Shaman’s lesson was clear: enjoy the process.

The Shaman Returns (August 24, 64–65)

Nearly two months passed before The Shaman returned. By August 24, the Guardians were spiraling once again after yet another failed attempt to climb the standings. They had lost five straight games, dropped 10 of their last 13, and had just been swept by the Texas Rangers—a sweep that also pushed them behind Texas in the Wild Card race. At 64–65, with fewer than six weeks remaining, the season once again felt as though it was quickly slipping away. The second article, The Shaman Returns, confronted that moment head-on.

Drawing from Toltec philosophy, The Shaman reframed the season not as an already determined conclusion, but as a story still unfolding. Struggle is not failure—it is initiation. For every meaningful story demands that the hero face trials. Without them, the hero never develops the strength required to ultimately succeed. The Shaman argued that growth requires resistance; evolution requires hardship; and true belief is not a blind optimism, but a grounded faith in the process itself. Only when belief is lost have we truly failed.

And yet what was about to occur would verge on the unbelievable.

The Hunt for October (September 21, 84-72)

The final Shaman article, The Hunt for October, was published on September 21, when the belief The Shaman had been preaching all season finally aligned with reality on the field. Just weeks earlier, they had been buried 15.5 games behind the Tigers, and the gap looked unbridgeable. And yet, after a stunning 14–1 stretch, they had climbed all the way back into the division race—sitting just one game behind Detroit, with six head-to-head games still remaining. At that point, the climb out of the valley was complete and they were suddenly standing on the doorstep of history. The challenge that remained was whether they could stay composed under pressure and finish the climb to the summit.

The final lesson was clear: patience had prepared them for this moment, but now it was time for execution—focus, precision, and presence would determine whether the Guardians could seize history. To illustrate that, The Shaman turned to the jaguar—the guardian of the jungle and the lessons it teaches us with its presence and its discipline. The Shaman explained that the jaguar does not chase recklessly. It does not expend energy trying to force an outcome. It moves deliberately, eliminating wasted motion, fully aware of each step it takes as it closes distance on its prey. The hunt is not a burst of effort, but a sustained state of attention.

The article closed by returning to the central principle that had guided the entire arc: patience, carried far enough, does more than preserve hope—it prepares you for the moment when execution is required. In the jungle, the jaguar does not strike early, nor does it hesitate when the opening appears. It strikes because the moment dictates it—no matter how formidable the prey standing in front of it happens to be. Even if that prey is a tiger.

The Final Lesson

Of course, the Guardians caught the Tigers, winning the division title outright on the final game of the season—sealed by a walk-off home run from Brian Rocchio that ricocheted off the foul pole. It was a moment straight out of The Natural, cinematic and unforgettable.

The season didn’t end with a World Series championship, but The Shaman would remind us once again that perspective is everything. What we witnessed was a historic campaign of Cleveland baseball, a story written with resilience, belief, and determination.

In the end, the Guardians showed what’s possible when a team trusts the process, embraces every challenge, and keeps faith in what’s possible. And in those moments we forget, The Shaman will be there.